001. Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
002. There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
003. To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.
004. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
005. The true genius shudders as incompleteness–and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.
006. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
007. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active–not more happy nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
008. Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
009. The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.
010. The nose of the mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
011. All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
012. In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.
013. Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
014. It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.